Postmodernisms: A Provisional History, 1914-2010

The purpose of this thesis is to explore and examine the development of the postmodernism from its confused beginnings following its various false starts until its successful coalescence in the 1970s. The value of this work is that it offers a chance to reorient and perhaps reconsider the often polarizing term. At times, especially given the hyperbolic nature of the debates, postmodern has become a pejorative term used to label a wide range of thinkers often questionably grouped together. The focus of this paper is to trace the history of the word postmodern and its numerous permutations. This thesis will also demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between modernism and postmodernism. Postmodernism, as will be seen, is always a possibility of modernism. Postmodernism functions within a framework of meanings tied, in various ways, to modernism.